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For a fleeting moment, Richard gave thought to waking the sliph to ask if she remembered Kahlan, but the ancient wizards, men of prodigious ability, had created the sliph out of a very exclusive and high-priced whore. She had become caught up in political intrigue that had eventually cost her life. The nature of that woman was still partly evident in the sliph; she never revealed the identity of one of her "customers."
"We'd better get back up there and let Zedd know we're all right." Richard's thoughts returned to the immediate problems. "Cara is probably fit to be tied by now."
"Richard," Nicci said in a soft voice as he started to leave.
He turned back to see her watching him. "Yes?"
"What are you going to do about A
He shrugged. "Nothing. What do you mean?"
"I mean, what are you going to do about the things they had to say? What are you going to do about the war? The time has come, and I think you know it. You can't go on chasing after your dream while the rest of the world faces the end of everything good-the end of all their hopes and dreams."
He stared at her a moment. She didn't shy away from his gaze.
"Like you said, that body down there didn't prove anything."
"No, but it certainly does prove one thing: that you were wrong about what we would find there. Digging up the grave failed to prove what you thought it would-at the very least. That begs the question of why? Why was it different than you said it would be? The only possible answer I can think of is that someone put it there with the idea that you would find it. But why?
"It's been a while since that night down at the grave. Since then you've accomplished nothing. Maybe it's time you thought about the bigger picture. And in the bigger picture, that prophecy makes the stakes pretty clear. I understand the value of one life you love-even if she were real —but to some extent don't you think you have to balance that one life against the lives of everyone else?"
Richard slowly paced off a ways, trailing his fingers along the top of the stone wall around the sliph. The last time he had traveled in the sliph he had taken Kahlan to the mud people so they could be married.
"I have to find her." He looked back at Nicci. "I am not the tool of prophecy."
"Where will you go? What can you do next? You've been to Shota, and you came here to Zedd. No one knows anything about Kahlan, or Chain-fire, or the rest of it. You've exhausted all your ideas, all your options. If not now, then when is the time to finally face reality?"
Richard rubbed his fingertips across his brow. As much as he didn't want to admit it, he feared that Nicci was right. What was he going to do?
He could think of nowhere else to go, nothing else to do. At least, nothing specific, not at the moment, anyway. He couldn't imagine what good it would do him to wander around without a plan, without any idea where to look for Kahlan.
The room was dead quiet. The sliph's well was empty, the sliph off somewhere with her soul. He wondered if Kahlan was still alive. He swallowed as he experienced one of those brief but terrifying moments when he wondered if she ever had been. He was so tired of the ever growing doubts, not just about Kahlan, but about himself.
At the same time, he was being crushed under the weight of guilt for not answering the call to lead the D'Haran people against the terrible threat to their freedom. He thought often of all the countless good people he didn't even know who also had loved ones under mortal threat from the coming storm of the Imperial Order. Could he just desert all of them in order to chase around, forever looking for Kahlan?
Nicci moved closer.
"Richard," she said in a soft, silken, sympathetic voice, "I know it's hard to say it's over — to say it's over, and realize that you have to move on."
Richard broke the gaze first. "I can't do that, Nicci. I realize that I can't explain it to anyone's satisfaction, but I just can't do that. I mean, if she got sick and died, then I would be devastated, yet eventually I know I would have to deal with the business of life. But this is different. It's almost as if I know she's in some dark river somewhere, calling for help, and I'm the only one who can hear her, who knows she in terrible danger of drowning."
"Richard.»
"Do you really think I don't care about all the i
"How would you feel if you were torn between someone you loved and doing what everyone else said was the right thing to do?
"I wake in a cold sweat in the dead of night not only seeing Kahlan's face, but the faces of people who will never have a chance at life if Jagang isn't stopped. When people tell me how all those people are depending on me, it breaks my heart-both because I want to help them, and because they think they need me, because they think that I, one man, can be the difference in a war involving millions of people. How dare they put that much responsibility on me?"
She came closer yet and gently put a hand to the side of his arm, rubbing up and down in a reassuring gesture. "Richard, you know that I wouldn't want you to do anything that you thought was wrong. Not even when it was to let you believe she was dead based on what I knew wasn't good evidence, even though I believe that evidence, if for other reasons."
"I know."
"But since that night when you dug up the grave, while you've been wandering around thinking about what you can do, I, too, have been doing a lot of thinking."
Richard flicked small stone fragments from the top of the well, not wanting to have to look up at her. "And what have you come up with?"
"Among other things, as I watched you walk the ramparts, a troublesome idea came to me. I haven't said anything about it yet partly because I don't know for sure if it could be the answer to what is happening to you, and partly because if it is, then it would be even more trouble than any mere delusion caused by your injury. I don't know if it's really the answer, but I fear that it very well might be. Mostly, though, I haven't said anything because the evidence is gone, so I have no way of proving it, but I think the time has arrived to broach the subject."
"Evidence?" Richard asked. "You said that the evidence is gone?"
Nicci nodded. "The arrow you were shot with. I fear that this may have all been caused by that arrow, but in a different and far more disturbing way than we've realized."
Richard was taken aback by her grave expression. "What do you mean?"
"Did you see who shot the arrow that hit you? Who held the crossbow?"
Richard took a deep breath while staring off as he sifted through the dim snatches of mental images of the morning of the fight. He'd only just awakened after hearing the howl of a wolf. Shadowy tree limbs had appeared to move about in the darkness. Then there had been soldiers all around him. He'd had to fight off men from all sides rushing in at him. He remembered quite vividly the feeling of holding the Sword of Truth, of feeling the wire wound hilt in his hand, of its power surging through him.
He recalled seeing men back in the trees shooting arrows at him. Most had bows, but there had been some with crossbows. That would have been rather typical for such a patrol of Imperial Order troops.
"No — I can't say as I recall seeing who shot the bolt that hit me. Why? What is it that you've come up with?"
Nicci appraised his eyes for what seemed an eternity. Her ageless eyes sometimes reminded him of others with magic; A
"The barbs on that arrow made it impossible to get it out of you in any ordinary way in time to save your life. I was in a desperate hurry. I never gave any thought to checking the arrow before I used Subtractive Magic to take it out of existence."